Call for Papers for a Panel entitled: ³Re-gendering the Male Homosexual inPost-Wildean British Literature² at the NeMLA (Northeast Modern LanguageAssociation) Convention, March 2-5, 2006, Philadelphia, PA

Using the pioneering work of Joseph Bristow¹s Effeminate England and AlanSinfield¹s The Wilde Century as starting points, this panel seeks to examinethe gendering of male homosexuality in post-Oscar Wilde, post-Labouchéreamendment, post-Cleveland Street scandal, post-Boulton and Park scandalBritish literature (1895-2005). The confluence of the above eventssolidified the cultural gendering of the male homosexual as effeminate, acultural stereotype that continues to thrive. Yet the literary responses tothis gendering do not uniformly follow the culture that produces them.Bristow¹s work does a fine job of detailing male effeminacy in latenineteenth-century and early twentieth-century homoerotic writing, but hislimited focus leaves out the masculine homosexual in the literature of thesame period. This panel strives to examine the masculine homosexual malecharacter along with the effeminate homosexual male character together inhopes of uncovering a ³homosexual² response to this forced gender identity.Possible topics may include, but are not limited to the following: E.M.Forster¹s emphasis on the masculine working-class male as homosexual idealin Maurice and in his short fiction, D. H. Lawrence¹s masculinehomoeroticism in Women in Love, the homosexual implications of VirginiaWoolf¹s gender lollapalooza that is Orlando, Quentin Crisp¹s militanteffeminacy in The Naked Civil Servant, Lytton Strachey¹s effeminateperformance of self, Christopher Isherwood¹s tales, Alan Hollinghurst¹s TheLine of Beauty, Jamie O¹Neill¹s At Swim, Two Boys, or Clive Barker¹sImajica.

Send 300 word abstract with a short C.V. to Damion Clark atdrclark_at_mail.umd.edu by September 15, 2005. Accepted panelists must be, orbecome current members of NeMLA by October 15, 2005.